


Chimehour

by Aloof_Introvert



Category: Alice in Wonderland (Movies - Burton)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, POV First Person, Set after the end of the first movie, Supernatural Elements, underland
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-05-19 04:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14866902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aloof_Introvert/pseuds/Aloof_Introvert
Summary: Tarrant wakes up in an abondoned wood with no memory of how he got there. He's always been superstitious, but surely this has a somewhat reasonable explanation...





	1. Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> The start of a new AiW fic! I rated it T due to the premise, which will be expanded upon later. I plan to write this in short little bursts, in multiple parts. : )

     Have you ever awoken somewhere with absolutely no recollection of where exactly you are? I’m afraid that I have after a few fits, but the most interesting and frightsome instance I can remember is waking beside a river, on the ground. I could smell rotting earth beneath me, clean water beside; and the birds chirped with an urgency I hadn’t observed in years. I sat up and my head pained me. It felt stuffed full of cotton, all over pins. The twilight played on the ripples of the river and seemed a balm to my weary eyes. I got to my feet gradually, puzzlelike unsteady. The worst part of the entire ordeal was that there was no way of inquiring where was I or how ever had I come to be there; I knew no-one in that curious deep part of the forest, and no-one knew me.

     It was at this point that I resolved to find my way home, but this too proved complexsome difficult. As soon as I chose a path to walk upon, an insidious doubt invited itself into my mind and I simply could not continue on in good conscience. I supposed, how ever, proceeding in poor conscience was preferable to not proceeding at all, and so I spun round on the spot and began to walk in the direction I happened to be facing.

     The path forwards, it seemed so dark; the plants, so lost of life. _Shrivelled, almost,_ I thought as I walked. _Curious._


	2. Outlandish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Stayne's opinion, the Outlands is the worst place to spend your life. He intends to leave it.

     The stories I had heard regarding the Outlands were entirely, infuriatingly true. I had heard stories about the sheer amount of nothingness the Outlands contained, and absolutely nothing of importance stretched before me. _The one snatch of undeniable truth I’ve ever heard,_ I thought, _and it had to be about this useless pile of sand..._

     My shackle clattered unceasingly as I fought my way through the last bit of sand leading to the jagged range of mountains that separated me from the rest of Underland. The sun was beating down. If I could have, I would have reached up and crushed the horrid thing in my glove in one movement. Useless.

     You can observe the type of mood I was in. All the blame should be placed on my exile in such a barren land (supposed to be a lifelong sentence, but I aimed to cut it short after one long year). But surely in all the time I had spent in the Outlands, I must have found something, someone I could tolerate? Hardly. The only other living creature I had seen in the whole place, I had taken my leave of. “Taken my leave” is rather a polite way of conveying it. I left while she was asleep, having worn down the chain over the course of a few nights; the next day, I could hear her furious scream echoing throughout the land. If any living thing had had the bleak misfortune to dwell in that pit, the reverberations surely would have killed it. The memory of her made me smirk. _Poor creature,_ I thought as I began to climb. _Poor creature._

     So, as you can see, I had escaped one insufferable situation with my life intact. Escaping another did not pose an issue.

     I reached the modest peak in short time; my height made sure of that. It was only quick enough. Stretching before me was a forest of trees swaying in the wind: all of it wretched, all of it ugly in the face of what had been done to me. Underland seemed all the sweeter for my being kept from it, yet so, so bitter. I smiled with teeth. I was accustomed to the taste.

     Over a small bluff, someone or something lingered in a clearing. Perhaps they had food or supplies for a disguise. _Finally,_ I thought, and exhaled all the exhaustion of my journey. _Something._


	3. Starlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A wandering Tarrant crosses paths with the last person he would want to see. The feeling is mutual.

     I had been walking for some time in the woods. That is all I was aware of. The sun had lowered and the moon had risen, somehow, sometime... The forest’s paths confounded me, its clearings even more. It was like walking through a maze of mirrors: befuddling and alltogether not very pleasant at all.  
     I left off walking, took a deep breath, and looked round myself. The loam of the forest had turned to grit and sand. I looked behind me; the last trees were barely able to be seen. How long had I been walking? And whatever was that figure shambling towards me over the nearest hill?  
     I squinted but could not possibly figure who or what the answer to that question was-- I thought perhaply it could be a perplexsome figment of a fatigued imagination. _But no,_ I thought, _I’ve been through far worse than a single night of walking without being visited by… whatever this spectre happens to be._  
     “Spectre,” “phantom,” “phantasmagoria;” all were frighteningly fitting words. As the being came up over the hilltop, the heat haze of what I guessed to be the Outlands blurred but couldn’t obscure the curious proportions it possessed.  
The figure was a tad less than three metres high with ganglesome limbs to match, wavy black hair, pale skin, a translucent form fitting for a ghost, and a rage that seared my heart even at such a distance. He looked up, and his one forest green eye met my lime-coloured gaze.  
     I turned round so quickly my head spun and walked even more quickly towards the forest. _Perhaps he didn’t see me,_ I thought. _Did he see me?_ A chill ran up my spine. What mimsy luck I had! I wanted nothing to do with the Knave; even a dead Knave was one to be avoided.  
     There were a few glaring problems with my situation, the most important that the Knave (being one-and-a-half Tarrants high) was advancing more rapidlike than I could ever hope to. Before I could scarcely turn round to note my progress, the Knave was beside me. He gave little indication of noticing me, only a flicker of a glance; and I heard him give an angrily huff. I stopped and looked at him, but he merely walked on with a sort of grim determination. Curious; it seemed a strange reaction for a man who once desired to, well, seperate my precious head from my body.  
     It was much too perplexish a mystery to leave unscrutinised. I searched my rememory; it wouldn’t do to address him with an insult, would it? Would he answer to that? Did he rightly remember his name? And most importantly, what in Underland _was_ it?  
     “Knave?” I tried after a minute of deliberation. He kept on as though I hadn’t said anything at all. It came to me then: “Stayne?” He stopped in his tracks and turned. His single eye looked down on me, almost through me, as though I were naught but a particularly loathsome inconvenience. And perhaps I was… but wherever he was hoping to go, and whatever he was planning to accomplish there, was certainly doomed from the start by his singularly spiritual state.  
     “Leave me be,” he muttered, and turned away. Despite my better judgement, I walked towards him.  
     “Somehow, I thought that you might have more to say.”  
     “Somehow, I thought that you might have _less_.” The Knave mumbled something under his breath, something that sounded like an insult. Naturally I needed to know what exactly it was.  
     “What was that?” I prodded. The Knave loomed over me with an expression dark as the sky.  
     “You are the most talkative dead person I have ever met,” said the Knave, with really more force than was truly necessary. I paused, looking up at his ghostly countenance.  
     “Knave,” I said, but admittedly, I wasn’t sure of how I should finish my sentence. I focussed on the horizon visible through his translucent torso and straightened my shoulders. “I’m terribly sorry to inform you that--” The Knave waved his hand at me irritably as though swatting away an impish gnat.  
     “You’ve gotten it confused,” he said, terse, and continued walking. We were coming over a rocky hill now, shards of stone among grit and moon-sparkled sand.  
     “ _You’ve_ gotten it confused,” I challenged, ascending the hill with just slightly more difficulty beside him.  
     “Did I not just say to leave me be?” The Knave’s clenched teeth somewhat muffled his words. “You’re as mad as ever. I had more than enough of you while you were alive.”  
     “I am alive, Knave. Presently. Right at this very moment.” My fingers shook; from mercury or something else, I don’t know. I reached the top of the hill and stood my ground while the Knave surveyed the land below.  
     “No, you aren’t,” he said.  
     “Yes, I am.” My fingers curled round my spool sash of their own accord and held fast. The Knave didn’t look at me (his sighted side was facing away from me, so you see he couldn’t) but I saw his face twist in frustration.  
     “No, you aren’t!”  
  _“Yes, I am!”_ I shouted, overcome with a rage that blackened the corners of my vision and seemed to lift me up with its sheer power. My outburst betrayed my rougher voice and dialect underneath my Englandish accent.  
     “Hatter,” said the Knave, glaring up at me pointedly. I looked down at him, then down at the ground. I was hovering some ten metres above the ground, above the sand and the grit and the air. In a moment I had fallen back down in a heap. I blinked.  
     “How did this…?” I whispered eventually. I was too stunned to finish, and far too stunned to stand up.  
     “That’s what they all ask,” said the Knave. “I haven’t the slightest idea of how it happened, nor am I aware of when-- or if-- you will remember.” I was silent for a long moment, wherein I picked myself up and reflexivelike began to dust the dirt from my clothing before realising that there was no dirt there to dust off.  
     “How are you able to see me?”  
     “Ah, question number two…” The Knave took a seat upon one of the rocks protruding from the hilltop. It occurred to me that I hadn’t the foggiest idea of how long he had been walking for. “Now do you see why I never linger with you spooks?”  
     “What with the way you were walking, I never expected you to linger for this long either,” I said, a tad bit defensively. In truth, being referred to as a “spook” proved utterly irksome to me. Perhaps I would become accustomed to it with time. The Knave stood.  
     “It doesn’t matter now. I don’t intend to stay any longer.” He began to descend the hilltop with the same grim determination he had exhibited previous. It was like a shroud; it wrapped him immediately.  
     “Where are you going?”  
     “To Crims,” he said, with nary a glance in my direction. “Will you let me alone?” I drifted alongside him, not quite walking and not quite floating.  
     “It’s my company or none, Knave, from the moment you cross into Witzend.”  
     “What in Underland are you blathering about now?”  
     “You know very well that you won’t be able to make it very far from the Outlands.” The Knave was silent. “Any one who sees you will directly seek to send you back to where you came from. There isn’t a soul in Underland who will overlook your sentence.” The night breeze moved the sand along the ground in swirls, and the Knave sighed.  
     “I’m perfectly aware, Hatter.”  
     “Then why are you going?”  
     “Why would any exile return to the place of his banishment?”  
     “To reminisce?” I tried. The Knave scoffed indignantly.  
     “To get revenge,” he replied. I didn’t reply; honestly, I was waiting for him to say more. The silence seemed to grate on the Knave, and eventually he demanded to know why I was quiet.  
     “It doesn't seem very Knavish, that’s all.”  
     “Seeking revenge?”  
     “Risking your life for revenge,” I said, holding up a finger to correct him. “Revenge is all very well and good, and quite knavish in nature, naturally-- But sacrificing yourself? And for no gain?” I glided closer, emboldened by the fact that he quite literally could not touch me. “Why, Knave. That’s nearly nonsense if ever I’ve heard nonsense in all my life.”  
     “All you speak is nonsense,” hissed the Knave in a moment of anger, but soon he simmered down. “Vengeance is its own ‘gain,’ Hatter. Though I don’t expect you to comprehend that, having spent the better part of the last decade taking tea with lunatics…” I let that latter comment go unnoticed. Truth be told, I wasn’t paying attention to the Knave’s jabs, lost in thinking. I thought on the reason the Knave could see me (and why he refrained from telling me), but what proved most confoundsome was a certain nagging in my rememory. Something was familiar to me, yet I could not possibly put my finger upon it. When finally it came to me, it surprised the Knave and I alike. “A chimechild. You’re a chimechild,” I blurted, reaching out to take the Knave by the shoulders. I nearly tumbled straight through him; evidently he was as corporeal to me as I was to him.  
     “A chimechild?” he asked, an incredulous sneer tugging across his face. He took a step backward and narrowed his eyes at me with a mixture of annoyance and suspicion.  
     “You were born at the stroke of midnight, correct?”  
     “Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?”  
     “It has everything to do with everything! According to Outlandish belief, those born on the chimehour are chimechildren-- and chimechildren are able to see phantoms.” How had I not realised it before? The tale was a common one, told on stormy days and frosted nights. Chimechildren were typically said to be quite gentle individuals, but the Knave would have to do.  
The spirit-seer in question was uncharacteristically quiet. He scrutinized my face suspiciouslike, as though endeavouring to find the jest in my words.  
     “What did you believe was the reason behind it? Surely someone must have attempted to guess.” The Knave shook his head, a hint of bitterness in his grimace.  
     “No one knew the reason,” he said, terse. But I could surmise what he had been told.  
     “They called you mad, didn't they?” It was more of a statement than a proper question.  
     “They called me plenty of things, Hatter. Let’s not dwell on it.”  
     “Is that why you plan to return to Crims? To prove them all wrong?”  
     “Are you listening to a word I'm saying?” the Knave barked, irked. I paused in front of him.  
     “Yes,” I said. I nearly added that that seemed to be the issue in our situation, but I decided against it. The Knave took off his gloves and endeavoured to clean the all-encompassing dust from them.  
     “Listen, Hatter,” he said. “The fact that you are still here tells me that there isn’t a soul in Underland who will overlook my sentence… excepting you. Correct?” I nodded. “And only by taking you with me might I be able to ‘prove them all wrong,’ as you put it.”  
     “Mayhaps. But in order to progress that far, you will need to help me as well, you know.”  
     “And how would I do that?”  
     “I can’t seem to find my way home to-night,” I explained, “and I would very much like to find my friends again.”  
     “How are we to do that without my being apprehended?”  
     “I know a path where no-one will possibly spot you.” I pointed to the east (or it is liable to have been the west, for all I knew), where a lake lay shimmering, shrouded by fog. “If I’m not mistaken, that is the loch separating the Outlandish mountains from Witzend. No-one ever ventures there.” The Knave followed my gaze and frowned.  
     “Why not?”  
     “It’s said to be infested by all types of mystical creatures, and not the kind you would like to be acquainted with.” The Knave gave a short, derisive scoff.  
     “You don’t truly believe those tales, Hatter?” I merely gestured to myself and looked him in the eye.  
     “Fine,” he sighed after a moment’s deliberation. “Tell me what sorts of spectres haunt this loch.”  
     “Oh, giantesses, wraiths, banshees… All sorts of evil beings, really. You’ll fit in perfectly.”

\----  
     With only a bit more quarrel, we set out to close the distance between us and the ancient loch. The Knave was useful in finding the path, at least; though as soon as we stepped into the mist, the moon appeared to take its leave of us. Perhaps it didn't wish to interfere, perhaps it didn't wish to observe the strangesome bickering of a man and the ghost of a man. Perhaps it didn’t wish to watch what would happen at all.  
     In any case, the wood was quiet; the sky, so very dark. We found our way by starlight.


End file.
